400,000 posts reached

Once again an additional 100,000 hits has come faster than expected, due to a few spikes of Russian bot activity. So the journey from 300,000 to 400,000 has been about 16 months.  This is quite good seeing as though I have posted very little in the last year!

This year (2018) I have posted a total of four blog posts, normally I average around 25 (or about one a fortnight). In 2017 after April is was only 6 posts.  So what has slowed me down?  Two words: house renovating.  It has consumed all my spare time - renovating a house we are moving to, and fixing up our house to sell.  Near the end of it all so early next year could be back to normal.

Despite all of this, I have actually been doing some gaming activity.  First, playing games with my children slowed down a little in the last half of 2017 but have made sure we get in at least one game a week this year.  I have a daughter, 12, and a 10 year old son and all games are played in the evening by the three of us and we have up to about an hour they can take up.  We are going mostly through old family, German and boardgames but have tried a few new ones.

Some games that did not make the cut were BattleStations (that I wrote a replay post about) but garnered no further interest so my plan is to play them with my SF pulp rules I am writing (more on that below).  I signed up for the 7th Continent thinking the children would like it. I was wrong ☹  I have consigned myself to giving this a solo outing in a few years once the second wave is delivered.  Games we have played before and are still on the list to give a go again are Heroscape and Cluedo. So from a boardgaming perspective I am still gaming.

But what about wargaming?  And miniature gaming in particular?  Well, I have played a few games but my main focus for the last 12 months has been writing rules.

I have written a number of rules that I hope to actually start testing when the renovations are complete:

• Ancients Battlelines Clash Version 3 but not played
• WW2 Company level rules for 20mm and 6mm - Latest version mostly written but not played
• WW2 rules on a 12x12 grid with 6mm forces on a 24cm board - wrote these, played 5 games and have most of a draft blog post but stalled on finishing it :-(
• Chaos in Pulp Alley - a mashup of Chaos in Cairo and Pulp Alley (blog post half written)
• Pulp miniature rules
• Medieval Naval Cog battles - version 2 written that I hope I will enjoy more than the frst version I wrote
• Fall of Rome streamlined - after playing 4 scenarios of the 1973 boardgame, I considered how to make it play much faster and less fiddly.

The main thing of note is that over the course of 2018 I have been working on running a solo RPG using a spreadsheet.  I have another blog for this so will summarise. In 2012 I started a solo Traveller RPG game using a spreadsheet but quickly ran into the issue that it was not what I wanted to play.  Over the following years I have tried out various diversions but none really clicked.  But this year I made it a bit of a focus to try another go at what I wanted from a solo RPG.

This blog post summarises the journey, my RPG rules, the mashup with the Two Hour Wargames Lovecraft’s Revenge, and what will be coming (actually write out the rules and use them to play some pulp noir and replay Traveller scenarios).  Included are some examples of output from the spreadsheet that I use to run the entirety of the game:

https://solostellarstories.blogspot.com/2018/11/using-mash-up-of-thw-lovecrafts-revenge.html

This blog post is the first adventure using the spreadsheet.  It only lasts three scenes, but as I say in the post, that is what I like about Lovecraft’s Revenge – there is an expectation that you may not survive to the end!

https://solostellarstories.blogspot.com/2018/11/tates-tragedy-adventure-001-mashup-of.html

I am already midway through the second adventure so that will go up on that blog sometime.   Note I have not forgotten miniatures – it just no time for them at home and I spend the occasional work lunchtime with the spreadsheet.  I will continue to post wargaming stuff on this blog and use the other blog for the RPG stuff.

Here is to 2019 seeing more wargaming for me!